Stop Waiting for Deals – How to Find & Create Opportunities

David Da Silva (00:00)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. That’s the number one question I get asked every single day. Even from my agents, I get asked that. And the biggest thing I could tell someone is yes and no, because it depends. I hate to give such a broad answer like that, but the reality is if your situation demands more,

Kristen Knapp (00:03)
Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

David Da Silva (00:20)
Especially with me, my market, a lot of people, as you can see, I’m right next to New York. So lot of people come from New York and they’re renting, right? And they…

they can’t stomach those $3,000, $4,000 rents. At that point, it’s a no brainer to buy a property, even if the interest is 10%. Just make sure you can afford it. And that’s what I tell them. You know, if you, if you have at least three, six, 12 months saved up, it makes sense. The property is good. Your expectations are met. It’s a great time to buy it. You should be buying right now because the reality is the house pricing is always going to go up. And even if it dips down a little bit overall, you know, that’s the trajectory.

Kristen Knapp (00:53)
Right.

David Da Silva (01:00)
trajectory.

Kristen Knapp (02:33)
Welcome back to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I’m Kristen and I’m here with David Da Silva, who’s the owner of Eleven X brokerage out of New Jersey. And he also does some investing himself. So thank you so much for being here, David.

David Da Silva (02:44)
My pleasure.

Kristen Knapp (02:45)
Yeah, I’m excited to get into all of this. Let’s go back to the beginning. How did you get into real estate? How did you fall in love with it?

David Da Silva (02:51)
Yeah, so that’s a story in itself. ⁓ I started helping a family member of mine after they just recently purchased a multifamily of their own. At that time, this was around 2017. They knew absolutely nothing about the property or just the potential. It was more so…

buy a property to get a little bit of passive income as I’m sure you hear all the time from investors, the whole reason to get into it. And just from start to finish, it was a nightmare. I could almost write a book just on that deal because every bad thing that could happen happened. So. ⁓

Kristen Knapp (03:28)
what was happening.

David Da Silva (03:30)
It was a mess. the house was in need of repair. was all in disrepair, but it was in a great area. If you know this area, we’re in Hudson County and that’s where my business is and everything. So the properties have huge potential, but this house definitely needed some serious repairs. So we started with what was called a FHA 203K loan and

Kristen Knapp (03:48)
the end.

David Da Silva (03:55)
They gutted the whole house out. They repaired everything. But it was just, it was a nightmare. Like I said, from start to finish, just finding the right contractors, following up with the deal itself. The people who were managing the mortgage weren’t sending the deposits. It was a very overwhelming and intense project that basically took over six months just to get done. And then it got stretched out to a year.

Kristen Knapp (04:08)
I know.

David Da Silva (04:23)
⁓ Between all the paperwork and all the legality

so after that we had to get tenants as if that wasn’t bad enough and even that was a process because ⁓ At that time I wasn’t even licensed in real estate, but I was getting the itch for investing in properties So I was you know going to local events and things like that ⁓ But I just saw how much suffering was involved with getting the tenants so

Kristen Knapp (05:15)
Yeah.

Yeah.

David Da Silva (05:38)
At

that point, was like, enough is enough. I got my real estate license and I helped her out with, and it was my sister, by the way, she was the family member, but I helped her out with getting the whole unit rented. we had that property, ⁓ probably five months on the market, nothing. And we ended up getting it rented out. Once I stepped in, got it rented out in just under two weeks, which was crazy. Yeah. And we actually said,

Kristen Knapp (06:04)
Wow. Wow. you…

David Da Silva (06:07)
Yeah, go ahead.

Kristen Knapp (06:07)
No, no, going.

David Da Silva (06:10)
and we actually set a record on the rent for that town, which was even better. So a lot of people thought I was crazy with what the rent would be. And this is way before COVID, you know, where the rents would just go up magically every day. This was actually a little bit of a challenge. So people were like, I’m amazed they got rented for that price. And once they saw that, then forget it. People started calling me.

Kristen Knapp (06:13)
Wow.

Yeah, yeah, that’s how you get into it for sure. What was the difference between when it was sitting and when you were able to move it so quickly?

David Da Silva (06:34)
Yeah.

Ugh, completely night and day different. I can show you pictures later, but it was literally the whole inside got gutted. mean, financially it was a six figure repair. Yeah. And as far as aesthetic, I mean, the whole house got redone, everything inside. Yeah.

Kristen Knapp (06:56)
Well that’s awesome. So that really like shot out your ⁓ real estate or your realtor career really quickly. How did you grow from there and how did you end up ⁓ owning your own brokerage?

David Da Silva (07:04)
Yeah.

Right. So then, ⁓ things definitely took off a little bit and it was very choppy at first because it’s not like I knew a million people. A lot of people get into the sales part of real estate by just, you know, call your circle of influence. And that didn’t work for me. So I ended up making calls and ironically that aligns with the investor side of things too, because

you’re not just gonna find a deal, it’s not gonna sit on your lap. And you can’t just go on an MLS and cherry pick or go on Facebook and look for a house. You have to make a deal. There’s no such thing as a deal sitting on your lap. So ⁓ I started making calls, I was meeting people, and I just ran into a ton of people. Throughout those couple years, I ran into a couple of good mentors.

They showed me the ropes. started diversifying what we were doing. I did a little bit of luxury, a little commercial. And long story short, I opened my brokerage just a couple weeks ago, and here I am. Yeah.

Kristen Knapp (08:08)
wow, that’s amazing.

So this is really fresh.

David Da Silva (08:13)
Yeah, you could say that.

Kristen Knapp (08:14)
Yeah, that’s

amazing. So how has it been? mean, you’re right in the thick of it right now. What’s kind of like your mindset, what’s on your to-do list?

David Da Silva (08:23)
it’s phenomenal. Very overwhelming, very tiring, but it’s absolutely worth it and I would do it anytime. Right now we’re just setting up systems. We’re getting everything put together. We just got this office, which is phenomenal. I don’t know how good the camera is, but the Statue of Liberty is literally right behind me. You could see it from there. So it definitely…

Kristen Knapp (08:38)
Yai.

David Da Silva (08:44)
Motivates you a little bit as I bring people here for meetings and things. We love it. So Just trying to put together the brokerage and also one of the big reasons ⁓ I’ll share this to one of the big reasons why I did this is to help not just investors find properties because I would say that’s easily 50 % or more of my business till this day so So even even with that, I do want to help my agents invest in properties,

Kristen Knapp (08:46)
Yeah.

Okay.

David Da Silva (09:12)
And I want them to have the security of that passive income and do it the right way. Because people say all the time, you know, invest in real estate, but what does that really mean, right? And people, they don’t really show you the ins and outs. And I think especially with social media, they don’t show you all the bad things that can happen and the pitfalls. You have to prepare for that.

Kristen Knapp (09:16)
Yeah.

right.

Right.

Yeah, so how are you going to go about helping them? Are you going to do coaching?

David Da Silva (10:15)
So we are doing some training as far as that goes. ⁓ have a pretty, we have a small team because we just started out. It’s about five people, but we do have a mix. have a couple of agents that are absolutely crushing it. They’re, they’re at least closing a couple of deals every month. And then we do have a couple that, you know, they’re just sitting down waiting for instructions. And I think with that type of agent, first they have to get their feet wet.

Kristen Knapp (10:22)
course.

David Da Silva (10:42)
Understand the market understand how to work things understand what a deal is and what the client wants to and and really no expectations so Yeah

Kristen Knapp (10:50)
Right.

What are some misconceptions that you think people have when they’re starting out in investing?

David Da Silva (10:58)
I think people, once again, because of social media, they made real estate look very sexy, which it can be when done right, but realistically that’s 10 % of the lifestyle. The other 90 % is not what they’re showing and it’s dealing with calls, it’s dealing with clients, dealing with tenants, dealing with all kinds of issues.

Kristen Knapp (11:04)
right. And the TV shows. Yeah.

David Da Silva (11:23)
we could go on for days just with that. had it on one of my properties, had a tenant that they were supposed to move out. And then long story short, I found out they were just leaving the country. And we had to work around with just the timing and everything, and it was a nightmare. And then, you know, it’s like a new story every day.

Kristen Knapp (11:41)
Yeah.

Right, you have to be ready for those changes. You have to be like comfortable in the uncomfortable, basically. So I mean, you’re bread and butter. You really source out these deals for people and help them build their portfolio. What makes a really attractive investment property?

David Da Silva (11:49)
Absolutely.

100%. Yeah, that’s how I do all my business, whether it’s personally or for others. I’ve just found that face to face or on the phone communicating, it’s the best way to outreach because like I said, if a deal is on the computer, if you see it online, it’s already too late. And now you’re just bidding and playing all these games. So the second part of that is qualifying what’s a good deal and what’s not. And that all comes down to

And like I said, I do this with clients and with agents. So whoever this is, I treat it like it’s me doing the deal. And I always ask, as I would to myself, what makes it a deal for you? Because some people might want a little bit of passive income, and they’re willing to sacrifice making so much more if they can have something more turnkey that is nice and clean and easy.

a $1.2 million house, but the rent is $5,000 per unit in a two-family and you’re sitting good. Maybe they want to live on the first unit, rent out the second and they’re good to go. But you might have another guy, maybe he wants just a little bit more aggressive expansion, which is kind of what I did. You might want a four-family and you’re willing to fix it up or you’re willing to maybe deal with a tenant that takes more of your time and you want to scale quickly.

You really have to start with those basics because when I first started, it was all about money for me. But then I realized how important not just the money, but the flexibility with your time. Because if you don’t have time, you’re not going to scale.

Kristen Knapp (13:34)
Totally. And I think you brought up a good point of figuring out what a good deal even looks like to you. Because I think a lot of people starting out don’t even think that far. And it’s like finding a job where you find out what you don’t want, kind of through experience. So do you think a lot of this is learned by experience? Or do you think you can really learn some of this through coaching?

David Da Silva (13:44)
Yeah.

You can absolutely learn both ways. And I’ll tell you personally that I am more of a fan of coaching because you are shaving off basically the other way of doing it. You’re shaving off those five, 10 years of suffering for lack of a better word, ⁓ to really get to the point. So it is, you could do it both ways for sure. But like I said, you’re going to pay with time or money and the choice is yours of how you want to proceed.

Kristen Knapp (14:12)
Thanks.

Yeah.

Absolutely. And I’m curious, know, I think a lot of people are a little hesitant right now, don’t really know what’s going on in the market, are kind of unclear. I would love for you to give your perspective on what’s going on. Is it a good time to invest, get into the game?

David Da Silva (14:38)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. That’s the number one question I get asked every single day. Even from my agents, I get asked that. And the biggest thing I could tell someone is yes and no, because it depends. I hate to give such a broad answer like that, but the reality is if your situation demands more,

Kristen Knapp (14:41)
Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

David Da Silva (14:58)
Especially with me, my market, a lot of people, as you can see, I’m right next to New York. So lot of people come from New York and they’re renting, right? And they…

they can’t stomach those $3,000, $4,000 rents.

At that point, it’s a no brainer to buy a property, even if the interest is 10%. Just make sure you can afford it. And that’s what I tell them. You know, if you, if you have at least three, six, 12 months saved up, it makes sense. The property is good. Your expectations are met. It’s a great time to buy it. You should be buying right now because the reality is the house pricing is always going to go up. And even if it dips down a little bit overall, you know, that’s the trajectory.

Kristen Knapp (16:12)
Right.

David Da Silva (16:19)
trajectory.

It’s always going go up. So that’s my yes. And then the no, I have a lot of clients, unfortunately, not as many as the good ones, thank God, but

Kristen Knapp (16:21)
Yeah.

David Da Silva (16:29)
I do have some clients that they got a little overzealous with their properties and now they’re having a little bit more of a hard time, even though I did mention a lot of things they could have avoided. So you really have to find out where your comfort zone is. And I think that’s the biggest step of why people meet me in the first place, because I’d rather send someone away than to have someone go all the way through a whole process. And then they end up regretting the whole situation, which is something I’ve never

Kristen Knapp (16:33)
Right.

David Da Silva (16:57)
to do so I am proud of that or my agency.

Kristen Knapp (17:00)
Yeah,

that’s amazing. And I do think people really value that. Just meeting people where they’re at rather than trying to be pushy. ⁓ I think in the business of sales, get a lot of people like that. You get a lot of people who are forcing a sale. So I’m sure people really appreciate that. Yeah. So as you’re expanding your team right now, what do you look for in your agents? How are you building out this team? What are your tips on working with the right people?

David Da Silva (17:07)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

Yeah, that’s a great question. I would say agents and clients, it’s almost the same category here too. I want to work with people. I’m always looking for people that the amount is limitless. That’s fine. As long as I could get a little bit of sleep in, I’ll work with as many people as possible. But I want to work with people that are hungry, but also have realistic expectations because I’ve seen many times

Kristen Knapp (17:43)
you

David Da Silva (17:53)
people are like I want a deal and then I ask them, you know, when I first started I would be like, ⁓ let’s go online. I’ll find the person the cheapest house and they’re going to love it. And then I realized that that’s subjective. Not one person is going to be the same as another. So I go off and I asked every single client and agent, you know, what is the deal for you? What are you looking for?

And as long as we can communicate that and we can get our expectations aligned, anything is possible. That’s the reality.

Kristen Knapp (18:22)
Yeah, well that’s amazing. I mean it’s cool to talk to you when you’re at the beginning really building this up to be something that’s going to be really big. ⁓ And then, you know, we were talking a little before the podcast about where this industry is headed, kind of it being tech focused and, you know, I know AI is a big thing that people worry about or unclear about with the industry. How are you seeing things change right now, like the landscape of real estate?

David Da Silva (18:48)
Yeah, a hundred percent. That’s a phenomenal question. ⁓ Right now it’s an exciting but equally scary time with AI. Just because I like to compare AI to a sword. You can do a lot of good with it. You could do bad with it too. I’m sure there’s a lot of stories where people see people are getting scammed or things like that, but it’s simply a tool. So how you use it is really what matters. Now I say this to any agent or investor,

If you’re not embracing AI, you’re definitely going to get let behind. But at the same time, don’t make it your whole life. That’s not what it is. It’s simply a tool that’s going to get you set up for success. So what we’re using right now with AI, we’re doing a lot of cool things. We’re actually working with a couple smaller software companies right now to set up.

Kristen Knapp (19:23)
Okay.

David Da Silva (19:37)
basically research and data on different types of demographics and clients and just matching it together.

And that’s how we’re getting information with, know, what’s the leading place for investment. Maybe this area has more opportunities. I’m sure you probably heard of like, they talk about this all the time on like a million podcasts, but like the Starbucks theory where you look for where, okay, I’ll tell you. So it’s where the nearest Starbucks is getting built. That’s where you got to invest.

Kristen Knapp (19:59)
Mm-mm.

All

⁓ yeah, yeah, yeah, right.

David Da Silva (20:10)
So

everyone that looks at it like that, that’s basically what we’re doing just in a little bit more of a calculated way. But we’re not losing sleep over it because at the end of the day, this is a person to person business and you have to understand if you’re not communicating with the person, you’re not going to get the point across.

Kristen Knapp (20:22)
all night.

Absolutely, I mean I think that’s a good point where there is a balance. It can really help people and it can help people multiply their efficiency. ⁓ But yeah, if you rely on it, it’s probably not good. Well this has been awesome. To kind of wrap it up, you’ve kind of talked about some lessons you’ve learned along the way, but what was something maybe you wish you learned earlier in your career that you can share with people now?

David Da Silva (20:54)
wow. There is a lot of things I wish I could have learned earlier. Although I don’t have regrets, I always respect the reality that you have to pay in life one way or another. That’s kind of been the whole theme here. And I would say from start to finish, the number one thing, if I could put something, there’s a lot of things, but if I had to pick the number one thing,

Kristen Knapp (21:09)
Yeah.

David Da Silva (21:20)
Surround yourself with people, at least a person, if you can, if you’re lucky enough, surround yourself with people that allow you to grow and encourage your growth and show you things. You should never be the smartest guy in the room because the moment you are, that’s the time to open the door and go to the next one.

Kristen Knapp (21:27)
young.

I think that’s really, really good advice. Well, I mean, you gave a lot of insight on investing, getting started, building a team. I think people learned a lot from this. So tell everyone where to find you in Eleven X.

David Da Silva (21:50)
Yeah, absolutely. ⁓ You could check me on my socials. Everything is DealWithDaSilva, D-E-A-L, with, and my last name DaSilva. And if not, you could go to the brokerage. It’s Eleven X, all spelled out, R-E for real estate dot com.

Kristen Knapp (22:05)
Well, thank you so much for being here, David.

David Da Silva (22:08)
My pleasure. Thank you so much.

Kristen Knapp (22:10)
Yeah, and thank you everyone for listening. Hope you learned a lot and we will see you back next time. Bye.